Telecom infrastructure specialist Flexenclosure has received a multi-million dollar data centre order from broadband service provider Burst Networks. Flexenclosure will deliver a customised prefabricated modular data centre, its eCentre, for Burst in Myanmar – one of the fastest growing ICT markets in the world.

The eCentre will be built in the Thilawa Special Economic Zone (SEZ) on the outskirts of Yangon and will be the first ever Tier 4 data centre in Myanmar. The Uptime Institute’s Tier 4 classification is the data centre industry’s most stringent in terms of redundancy, fault tolerance and availability. Tier 4 facilities are typically used to host mission critical systems. All heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems are independently dual-powered for redundancy and their fully fault-tolerant site infrastructure gives an availability of 99.995 per cent.

It is a full turnkey project including civil works and installation of the eCentre. Construction will take place at Flexenclosure’s factory in Vara, Sweden, with deployment in Myanmar in early 2016. A key eCentre benefit is its prefabrication in Flexenclosure’s clean room factory in Sweden. This will ensure an extremely high quality product and a much shorter overall project duration than if it was constructed from scratch on site, thus enabling Burst to launch their new services to the market very fast.

Burst Networks’ teleport will not only include the new Tier IV data centre, but also a state of the art network operations centre connecting a hybrid network of local fibre and satellite infrastructure (supporting C-Band, Ku-Band and Ka-Band frequencies). When commissioned and licensed to operate, the teleport will provide a robust, scalable, state-of-the-art nationwide network offering broadband services to enterprise, SME and third-party provider clients such as data connectivity, VPN, VoIP, video conferencing, network redundancy, data storage & recovery, colocation and hosting services.

“We believe the Thilawa project is of great strategic importance to the further development of Myanmar. The Burst teleport will make infrastructure available to customers in key growth sectors – such as financial services, and mobile communications – that is critical to support their modernisation and expansion plans. Our focus on quality, security and reliability will enhance our customers’ ability to better serve their clients, compete in regional and global economies and minimise their operational risks,” said Daniel Michener, CEO of Burst Networks. “To that end, we chose to design a world class facility and a Tier IV datacentre is the cornerstone of our ability to execute this strategy. It was imperative that we select a supplier who would not only be able to provide us with the best data centre possible, but who we could also work with as a trusted partner from the development of the initial business case and design, right through to the ultimate delivery of the facility to ensure a best of class result. And with Flexenclosure, we know we’re in very good hands.”

Strong presence in Myanmar

The new eCentre will have a total area of 330sqm, consisting of a 220sqm data centre and a 110sqm energy centre. It has been designed for a total of 72 racks with two secure pods, two secure cages, two meet me rooms and with 40 racks in a common data centre area. Power is designed for a total IT load of 150kW, with 2N+1 power redundancy.

“I am very pleased to announce this first ever Tier 4 data centre in Myanmar,” said Shalini Lagrutta, Regional Director, Asia, Flexenclosure. “Modular data centres are ideal for emerging markets like Myanmar, thanks to their speed of deployment, inherent flexibility and future agility. We already have a very strong presence in Myanmar, having deployed over 1,000 of our eSite hybrid power systems across the country, and we’re delighted to further strengthen our presence with this new eCentre project.”

Myanmar is growing extremely fast with a projected GDP growth in 2015 of 8.3 per cent.